aegrotatioYeah, VRE passengers are endlessly bitter about the fine and it's mentioned in almost every one of their regular newsletters along with the boilerplate excuse about Virginia law and blah blah blah.
Aegrotatio, I generally support publicly operated transit. But very often is seems to me that these agencies just cannot avoid shooting themselves in the foot. This is one case. In these days of computers it should be very easy for VRE or New Jersey Transit to issue a single courtesy ticket to customers with identification. Then, when they come across a rider with an unvalidated ticket, they could simply look him up on the data base. If it showed he already had gotten his courtesy ticket then he would be fined; if not, this is his one strike. It sure would be good public relations. Instead they choose to constantly erode public opinion of them among precisely the segment of the public they want to have a good opinion.
Actually, New Jersey does this on the Garden State Parkway. Somehow our transponder got misplaced and I drove through an Easy Pass toll house not realizing it. Sure enough I got a summons in the mail with a fine. But there was a special block. It said if I had Easy Pass I could provide the information and mail back the summons. The toll would go on my Easy Pass bill but there would be no fine. I did that.
I wonder if NJT or VRE would consider a one no fine unvalidated ticket policy.
Wonder if the solution would be to apply 3 use age validations to any 10 trip tickets not validated ?. Single tickets?
Our community is FREE to join. To participate you must either login or register for an account.